Reader, I
see it first from the window. Body break-dancing around itself. A rabbit's epileptic fit. Poor pinwheel. Poor whip. The in-between becomes more brutal. The will-it. The won't. The don't-keep-watching, then it's dark. "Shouldn't we?" I ask, knowing how that we falls apart. He catalogues the possible weapons. The shovel. The brick. The bat we keep in case. It hurts to look directly at his face, so we both keep watching the grass. He's gentler than I. Finds no pleasure in pain. Suddenly it sprints—we go hopeful, silent. Search the night. "There!" Midleap the muscles grab it back, how it shakes and shakes. We haven't left the kitchen light. I've read (Watership Down?) how they can shriek. What makes us train the hurt back on ourselves? Why do we stand so touchless? I'm ready to do it, almost greedy to be good. Check his face for the OK. Turning away, I lose it. Which should be a happy loss. Which should grant us both good sleep.
Feature Date
- August 15, 2024
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“Reader, I” from READER, I: by Corey Van Landingham.
Published by Sarabande Books on April 16, 2024.
Copyright © 2024 by Corey Van Landingham.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Corey Van Landingham is the author of three books of poetry: Antidote, Love Letter to Who Owns the Heavens, and Reader, I, which was published by Sarabande Books this past April. She is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, and she teaches Creative Writing at the University of Illinois.
"Shimmering. . . In prose epistles and restive lyrics, Van Landingham’s work teems with the literary and moral pleasures of an undaunted psyche permitting itself to be infused with other minds."
—David Woo, Literary Hub, "7 New Poetry Books to Read This April"
"Inventive and lyrically precise. . . . rife with searing and affective musings on love and matrimony."
—Publishers Weekly
"Virtuosic. . . . Awake to the dangers of losing oneself ('Me wiving, me future-wide') to the private commons of “we” ('It seemed to me the greatest risk // was to become too legible'), Landingham shows, with a brilliant balance of registers, how gender politics can be fertile ground for high comedy."
—Virginia Konchan, Poetry Foundation's "Harriet Books"
"Reader, I is a remarkable investigation into what makes a marriage, the intersections where fiction fails and real life prevails. Landingham may be one of the most proficient lyricists among us.”
—Ronnie K. Stephens, The Poetry Question
"A dazzling ride of allusion, wit, bawdiness, and joy."
—Foreword Reviews
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